The Glory of Just Showing Up

For many small nations, the Olympic experience lasts only a few minutes

By

Barry Newman

Updated Aug. 16, 2008 11:59 p.m. ET

BEIJING -- Aishath Reesha, a 19-year-old 800-meter runner, had just finished practice at the Chaoyang Sports Center, a proletarian track sequestered from the Olympic mobs. She sat with her back to a recently whitewashed wall, an ice-pack on her neck, and watched as a French sprinter sped past.

"We can't compete with people from other worlds," she said in a whisper. "I'm not scared. My goal is to better my personal best."

Ms. Reesha is from Maldives, a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean with a population of 379,000, per capita income of $4,600, and a serious worry about being washed away. Her personal best in the 800-meter race is 2:32.97; the Olympic record is more than 38 seconds faster.

"We are not qualified for the Olympics," said her coach, whose name is Ahmed Faail. He was standing over Ali Shareef, his 100-meter runner, who was on flat on his back with a leg in the air. Mr. Faail was helping him work out a kink. "In the heats there are people with a lot of experience," he said. "We will not be winning heats."

Podcast

For the richest, brawniest countries here, the medal count is all that counts. China, Russia and the U.S. are in Beijing to "win" the Olympics. But among the 222 countries that have sent athletes to the modern Games since 1896, only 130 have brought a medal home. The rest, like Maldives, march in the opening parade and then, after a few minutes -- or seconds -- in the pool or on the track, they're out.

The International Olympic Committee seems to commiserate with its medal-deprived delegations. For decades, it clung to the ideal that nations didn't play in its contests at all; people did. It began listing medals by country less than 20 years ago. Yet the IOC, in its own way, is also intent on counting countries: It wants every one on Earth to play its Games, whether they're good or not.

ENLARGE

Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea took nearly two minutes to swim 100 meters in 2000.
DPPI-SIPA

What's billed as a meet for the fittest in truth has a second division of schlumps. Every nation is encouraged with money and training programs to send one man and one woman, even if they don't have a soul who qualifies. The IOC doesn't tally how many of the 10,500 athletes here get in that way, but they appear to number at least in the hundreds. Most end up swimming or running, activities where being inept doesn't automatically result in broken necks.

Olympic universality has bred a line of famous bunglers, from Wym Essajas of Suriname, who missed his 800-meter heat in 1960, to Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea, who took nearly two minutes to swim 100 meters in 2000. Yet for all its promotion of participation, the IOC gives its losers no glory: Its history-packed Web site displays only winning countries and their medal counts.

Asked where to find lists of also-rans, an IOC press officer suggests sending an email to its information center. It's the sort of reply that's long griped a small international club of amateur statistics nuts calling themselves the Oly Madmen. Led by Bill Mallon, a shoulder surgeon in Durham, N.C., the Madmen have spent five years building an easy-to-manipulate database that comprises every run, jump, throw, dive and somersault in Olympic history. It folds in Hector Hatch's ninth-place welterweight boxing tie for Fiji in 1956, and the 51st-place mixed-free-pistol finish Aferdita Tusha racked up for Albania in 1972. The Madmen have compiled the records of 110,000 Olympic athletes and are at work on thumbnail biographies for each one; so far, they've done 24,000.

Olympian National Product

Here's a list of what countries have the highest gold-medal winners per millions of population, from data prepared by Australian researcher Simon Forsyth. Updated as of Friday.

RANK/COUNTRY

GOLD

SILVER

BRONZE

GOLD*

1 Slovakia

3

1

0

0.5507

2 Georgia

2

0

1

0.4305

3 Mongolia

1

1

0

0.3388

4 Australia

5

7

8

0.2447

5 Czech Rep.

2

2

0

0.1955

6 Finland

1

0

1

0.1909

7 Switzerland

1

0

3

0.1324

8 Azerbaijan

1

2

1

0.1231

9 S. Korea

6

9

3

0.1223

10 Italy

6

4

4

0.1032

*Per million citizens

"It's one of those hobbies that becomes an obsession," Dr. Mallon says. He adds: "We tried for years to get the IOC to do this. They told me in 2006 that they'd look at it again in 2009. They're not going to look at it in 2009."

The IOC wouldn't say why. Dr. Mallon surmises that it's worried about accuracy. He says the Madmen are fact-checking nonstop to get their labors "as close to perfect as we can." In late July, they took their data public: Now anyone can play with it on the Web, free, at a commercial site: www.sports-reference.com.

A statistical juggle even the Madmen don't attempt is a medal count by wealth and population. At least one Web site tries it: http://simon.forsyth.net/olympics.html. Simon Forsyth, a researcher in Brisbane, Australia, began doing his medal math that way because he was sick of hearing that "the Americans won the Olympics."

By gross domestic product, his winner in 2004 was Eritrea; by population, it was the Bahamas. In the Beijing 2008 count for total medals by population, as of Friday the U.S. was 31st; China was a distant 44th. Armenia recently took the lead from Mr. Forsyth's own country, Australia. "Should you be proud that your country won more medals than anyone else?" he asks in an e-mail. "Sure, why not? Should you be proud that your country won more medals per population than any other country? Yes -- at least equally so."

True, its one running track is made of soft sand, so it's no wonder Ms. Reesha and Mr. Shareef had modest hopes for their Friday morning heats. And in Maldives, the swimming pools are all for tourists. Its two 50-meter swimmers -- Ibrahim Shameel and Aminath Rouya Hussain -- couldn't have been anything but long shots in their heats Thursday and Friday evenings. At home, they've nowhere to train but the sea.

"I'm being a little political here," said their coach, Adam Mohamed, dropping by the practice track for a visit, "but there has been land allocated for a pool since 1988. It's drawings, drawings, drawings." Not that Mr. Mohamed expects much investment in an Olympic team from a country still in post-tsunami recovery. "The priority is to attend ceremonies," he said. "We are an unqualified country. The most important thing is to hoist the flag."

As things turned out, Ms. Hussain came in next-to-last in her 50-meter swim Friday evening, and didn't succeed in bettering her best. On Thursday, Mr. Ibrahim placed next-to-last in his heat, too, with a time of 29:28. But it was the very first time he'd ever raced in a 50-meter pool, so he can say that he did achieve his personal best.

On a sunny Friday morning at Beijing's Bird's Nest, Ms. Reesha trailed 30 seconds behind the field in her 800-meter run, and came in last against all 40 runners. But she still met her own goal, beating her personal best by more than two seconds. And Ali Shareef, running the 100 meters in 11:11 and finishing 69th in a field of 80, not only set his personal best -- he set the Maldives' national record as well.

But it's in flag-hoisting that this little country has scored its own personal best in Beijing. Anyone who sweated through the opening ceremony here knows how the fun faded as the parade of nations crept toward the two hundreds. Ms. Hussain was there, carrying Maldives' white-crescent flag and trailing a small, smiling contingent in long sarongs.

This time, though, they weren't in their usual place, way back among the M's. The Chinese-character equivalent of alphabetical order produced an upset: At these Olympics, Maldives marched seventh.

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